“You sonofabitch deer!” Austin bellowed, tearing off catalogue pages 353 through 359 and applying them to the task they were there to perform. “Get the hell out of my house!”
The deer emerged, a gnawed-open box of crackers in its muzzle, contents flying. And again it looked across the snow at Austin, as if surprised that the fellow had lost his cool and turned so suddenly hostile.
Austin was indeed hostile, as who wouldn’t be when a guest oversteps himself. And he stood pulling up his trousers and buckling his buckle—at which point the deer acted as if it had been shot. It leaped into the air and did a right-angle turn before coming down. And when it did come down it was in full flight, the cracker box still clamped in its jaws as it disappeared over the nearest hill.
And Austin knew why. Sitting there as he had been, dramatically lit and framed picturesquely in his doorless backhouse, he had appeared to the fuzzy-thinking animal as something it had never before seen—and something it need not fear, since its computer had no print-out on it. But once he stood up, on two legs, he was man. Man, the hated biped. Man, the cruel predator. And the computer flashed its word and the deer disintegrated in the sunset.
The contest thus concluded, Austin was once again King of the Hill. He just didn’t much care for the hill he was king of, and so he finished up and headed home, taking a proper amount of time in which to stomp out a flatter, firmer path—so that his next trip to the backhouse might not again end up as a flaming five-alarmer, and there’d be no wicked old deer to run off with his favorite crackers.
7
Austin reentered his house numbly, pulling the door closed and bolting it in the momentary fear that the deer might return with hungry reinforcements, some with huge antlers, others with sharp teeth, all with a predilection for odd carrots.
The fire in his stove was still doing nip-ups, the house managing to keep warm despite his having left the door open. He hung up his snowshoes with affection. They were his friends and he patted them as such, wanting them to know, tactilely, his everlasting gratitude. At his first opportunity he would wax them, or oil them, or twang them, or whatever had to be done to snowshoes to keep them in tiptop happiness.
He took stock of his situation. It wasn’t bad. He had arrived. He had taken possession. He had lit a fire and had eaten. He had made friends with his backhouse and had had a chat with one of the neighbors. He had followed his nose all the way from Vietnam and had made it to this pinpoint on a map that there probably weren’t ten copies of in the entire archipelago. It was okay. All was well. Good show.
And so, feeling good, he sang:
“I left my ass—in Cincinnati,
Beneath a blue, enchanting sky.
And I’ll return to you, Cincinnati—
When my ass learns how to fly.”
His had never been a good voice. In high school he had been labeled a listener and told to merely stand there and mouth the words. But this was his own house and if he wanted to sing he’d sing. And if he wanted to sing a second chorus he would, and did. And if he wasn’t any good, there was nobody around to say so.
The angle of the sun was lowering, the once intense rays weakening and filtering through the windows in beams practically parallel to the floor. It would soon be dark. He looked over the room. He had enough lanterns. He had enough firewood. He had all that he needed—except one thing. A bath. He needed a bath. He was beginning to smell like a hyena pelt and he needed a bath.
Toward that end he selected the largest vessel he could find, a huge oaken tub hugged together by rusting iron bands. It was three feet in diameter and equally as high, the inside bottom of it coated with a half-inch of mossy slime. But bathers couldn’t be choosers. Besides slime was better than splinters any old day. Plus—and very important—if Maynard hadn’t wanted it that way he’d have done something about it, like scrape it clean, or disinfect it, or apply Vigaro for a richer, fuller growth, or switch to Astro-Turf like your more affluent football teams.
He was finding it mitigating and assuaging to explain away every unattractive and malfunctioning item in the house as being that way by Maynard’s design. It was comforting to play such a game, like relying on a higher power for both love and guidance, or possessing an efficacious religion to fall back on whenever the going got rough. The extension of such thinking, of course, was to make a golden idol in Maynard’s likeness and worship it, and offer sacrifices to it—part of his larder, small animals, chickens if they’d ever show up. He thought on the matter no further than that—first, because there was no gold on the premises; second, because it was easier to remain a nonpracticing Presbyterian; and third, because he needed that bath and right away.
The pump goosenecking over the dry sink was well greased and, with just a little gentle coaxing, brought the water up from the cellar cistern as advertised. He filled two metal pitchers and a copper kettle and set them on the stove to boil. It was a time-consuming affair and he began to understand why the old pioneers had fixed on one bath a week as being proper enough hygiene. Two baths and there’d be no time for planting. Three and they’d have to adopt their children.
The old tub was soon full enough for human immersion, and he stepped into it, a bar of pine tar soap in one hand, a worn scrub brush in the other. All he needed was his plastic duck.
It was a fine bath, setting Austin again to singing.
“Shenandoah, I hear you calling
Across the wide Missouri…”
The plaintive lyric brought tears to his eyes, though it could have been his voice. The soap lathered and slathered, the warm water had magical soothing powers, the scrub brush had gotten his blood to running, the steam was happily rising, the windows were fogging, his skin was tingling—and someone was watching.
It wasn’t really a someone. It was more of a something. He could sense it, feel it. He had learned to do that in Nam. If something was around that wasn’t supposed to be around, he was the first man to know it.
The water in his tub turned almost immediately cold. Whatever it was it was impossible to discern in the fading light, for, even though he had thought to do it, he had neglected to light one of his lanterns.
His eyes eventually picked out the “thing,” and he saw that it had form, hovering as it was in a corner where the two walls met to fuse darkness and darkness into greater darkness. Its bulk, though unmoving, was coiled, its eyes shining—more light in them than in anything else in the room. Judging from the distance he estimated the corner to be from his tub, the thing’s eyes were not more than an inch apart. And they were like lumps of oily coal, dead but glistening. Shark’s eyes, reptilian. A snake! And Austin let out a cry and stood up in his tub, the suds flying every which way, his toes struggling to maintain their grip on the tub’s greasy bottom lest he topple over the side like a man overboard.
The snake was caused to move at all this, and it wasn’t a snake at all, because snakes didn’t have bushy tails. It was a beaver. Or a mink. Or an otter. Or a raccoon. Actually, it was a squirrel, and it perched there, looking at Austin as if he were mad, splashing around in a bucket, foaming like a rabid ape, yowling like a cornered stag.
The squirrel was not alone in this opinion, for it had two companions, the three of them soon bounding about up there in the nooks and niches, watching Austin do his imitation of the Statue of Liberty, soap in one hand, brush raised high in the other.
“Jesus Christ!” he cried out, as much in relief as in surprise, for squirrels were cute little things not known to harm humans. And far better it was to be in the company of three small squirrels than in the range of one long snake.
Austin submerged again calmly into his tub, where the water was once again warm and from where he could see that his three little squirrels had obviously been exercising squatters’ rights over his foodstuffs for quite some time. They were that round and decadently lumpy. The only squirrels in Maine with the gout.
Playing Dr. Doolittle again, a role he was beginning to feel more and more
born to, he addressed his subjects with grace and assurance. “Hi, gang—I’m your new landlord. You guys from around here?”
The squirrels placed their heads together, the better to discuss the matter. They were quite animated in their fits and starts and adorable spasms, so quaintly winning in their scramblings that it was impossible for Austin to look upon them as being bona-fide members of the rodent family. They gabbed and chattered, wrung their little claws, scratched their heads, and sat on their haunches like furry andirons. They reminded Austin of three green second lieutenants he had once seen trying to make a combat decision.
Soon enough the ranking squirrel dropped to the floor and herky-jerked across for a closer look at the lathered Gulliver in their midst. It advanced in movements so spurty as to appear that its shadow was running a split second off the pace. It looked up at Austin, its nose atwitter, its tail patting the air behind it like a train signal. And it remained that way, just looking at Austin, as the deer had done earlier, and Austin began to wonder if both animals weren’t trying to figure out whether or not he was Maynard Whittier come back to the Old Homestead. Certainly it was possible that Maynard had domesticated them, had possibly allowed them full run of the house. Ah, but they had not been included in the will, and, should the issue ever go to court, Austin would win, paws down.
Austin and the squirrel remained that way for some moments, wiggling noses at three paces, with Austin the first to break eye contact when it crossed his mind that he might have inadvertently joined the little fellow in some kind of cabalistic mating dance—and if there was one thing he did not want to contend with while nude in a tub of water, it was a horny squirrel.
He looked up to where the other two squirrels were squatting—only they weren’t there anymore. Perhaps they had had the decency to leave the lovers. How civilized.
One thing, though, was for sure: the bath water was turning chilly, this time for real, the lather caking and the moss beneath his ass evidencing unmistakable signs of sea life. So, reaching for his towel, he stood again in his tub, the ribbony soapsuds sluicing off him as if he were a melting Good Humor. And seeing Austin in so preposterous a posture, the heartbroken squirrel scampered off, disappearing into a corner—and the love affair was over.
Lighting a lantern, Austin knew that he would one day have to ask himself if his naked body was truly frightening or merely absurd. Whichever it was, various animals indigenous to the area were fleeing at the sight of it. He toweled off briskly because the room wasn’t really warm. It was warm only by comparison with how cold it had been.
He pulled some clean clothing from his duffle bag, wondering what he was supposed to do with his soiled clothing. The answer was simple and forthcoming. He’d wash it in the very same tub in which he had just washed himself. Waste not, want not. And so he tossed it all into the greasy water, to soak. In the morning he would give it artificial resuscitation, no starch.
Looking like a Roman senator in his towel, he unpacked, stacking his clean G.I. clothing onto shelves already neat with Maynard’s carefully stored civvies. And he realized how good it was that he and Maynard had been just about the same size in just about everything. For not only had he brought with him precious little clothing of his own, but none of it was really suitable for that Northeastern winter he had waltzed into so cavalierly.
He glanced up at the bowed ceiling, wondering how many squirrels were up there in that space between the ceiling and the roof. He’d have to look into it, of course, but not tonight. Any attempt at disenfranchising his tiny tenants would have to wait until morning. And even as he slid into a pair of his G.I. scivvies, he could hear the little beasties up there, scampering about, spreading the word that a new master was on the premises and that, on first appraisal, he appeared to be acceptable.
He banked his fire rather well, for he had had some experience with barracks fireman duty during basic training and had acquired a passable professionalism. He checked his windows, making very certain that they were secure, just in case a wind came up, or a burglar, or anything capable of skinnying itself through some chink in his wooden armor. Not that anything out there anxious enough to get in was likely to be dissuaded by a window. Still, for it to gain entrance, a window would have to be broken and he would hear the glass shatter—and, whatever it was that was coming in, it would have just one quick look at Austin Fletcher going out.
His tiredness was more akin to exhaustion as he made his way to his giant bed, leaving one lantern lit as a beacon against all things that might go bump in the night. He pulled the gaily-colored patchwork quilt back and sandwiched himself between it and the sheets, not concerning himself with whether or not the sheets were clean (which they were) or cold (which they were).
He lay on his back, arms folded behind his head, and he stared at the ceiling which was alive with the rustle of squirrels. There was no way in the world he’d be able to fall asleep that night, what with nosy deer and noisy squirrels abounding, and ghosts and witches and visions of backhouses exploding in his head. But in minutes he was asleep. Soundly. Deeply.
The night was hushed and obscure, nothing between moon and sun but a forlorn hooting owl surveying the predawn from a pine tree already dripping with dew. “Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer-hoo.” It was all the song he knew.
But it was not the owl that woke Austin. And it was not the kerosene lamp flickering and then dying, plunging the room into abject darkness save for the few glitters of moonfire that rebounded off the snow-laden hills. And it was not the wind picking up and pressing its way through the uncaulked splits of the solemn old house. It was the Boston rocker, camped in the parallel blackness of the other room, creaking. A steady and repeated creaking—as if someone were in it.
Austin stirred, the sound beginning to sift into his head. His left arm, the dreamer, pulled the quilt over his chin so that he might slide deeper beneath its mantle and coax more sleep from the night. But his right arm, the guardian, pushed the quilt away, a rush of cold sweeping over him, causing him to sit quickly upright in his bed, his unready eyes striving to pick out the noise, to track it to its source.
The creaking was persistent, nothing to compete with it but the owl and the wind which was pushing at the morning fog and licking down the chimney. Another noise, distant and erratic, insinuated its presence. Dogs, barking. Or so he thought. Two of them.
Not asleep and not awake, his dilated eyes fixed on the other room, Austin eased himself from his bed, his toes momentarily ensnared in the bearskin rug on the floor. Two steps toward the creaking—and it stopped. And all was silent, even the dogs—or whatever they were. Probably foxes, barking fitfully at the moon. And he stood in the hanging silence, unsure of anything he’d been hearing and very little of what he’d been thinking. The cold draped itself around him and he fled from it, returning to the warmth of his bed like a prodigal pea to its pod.
In seconds he was back to sleep, while outside, the owl and the wind—the two constants of the night’s music—played on into the night’s remainder.
8
The early sun speared through eastern windows, and Austin awoke. Above him the squirrels, up and active, padded about beyond the ceiling. Busy, busy, busy. Shake, rattle and roll.
The room was bright and cheery, the banked fire having survived the night though the kerosene lamp had not. He’d have to check the wick. He’d have to check all the wicks of all his lamps. Months of non-use had very likely dried the lot of them to a brittle unusability.
Outside in the good day, beyond windowpanes white-furred with a half inch of frost, some discordant Canada jays were giving a pair of foraging partridges what-for. And sparrows, some sharp-tailed and some white-throated, seemed especially diminutive alongside the grackles and grosbeaks so inclined to corpulence. Chimney smoke had attracted the birdlife, and Austin knew they’d be hanging around from then on, voicing their appetites, awaiting their handouts.
The night wind, now stilled, had laid patterns on the snow, covering slightly Au
stin’s snowshoe prints of the day before, though tracks of rabbits and foxes and mice were morning-fresh, powdery indications of the quiet hubbub that had taken place during his slumber.
Stepping into his living room, he looked over at the Boston rocker and remembered, fleetingly, how it had intruded on him during the night. Had it really rocked? And did it really creak? He walked over to it and nudged it into action. It rocked, but it didn’t creak—and he smiled, accepting the hypothesis that it had done neither except in the limbo of his susceptible mind.
He shrugged it all off, for there was work to be done, things to be set into motion if he was to survive in the good old glacier-scarred “Pine Tree State.” State flower: white pine cone and tassel. State bird: the chickadee. He had looked all that up before starting on his journey. It was all the knowledge he had accrued on Maine but had seemed enough at the time.
He poked the fire in his stove, and new flames kicked up. Then he fed the iron beast another log, as reward for having done its night work so well.
He donned some of Maynard’s clothing, which fit well if not perfectly. And, to put on Maynard’s insulated boots, he sat unthinkingly on Maynard’s Boston rocker. It creaked. It did not escape Austin that, with no one in it, the rocker had not creaked. To test this point, he stood up and agitated the rocker—and it did not creak.
“Someone has been sitting in my chair,” he quipped. A dozen or so unseen little denizens set to running every which way at the sound of his voice. And he stepped away from the rocker, not frightened, for he was certain that it was a dream that had conjured the rocking and the creaking. Still, he had a new respect for the chair, and he chose to not reflect on the incident further.
His laundry needed attending. It had soaked all night in the soapy tub, and picking up pieces of it, scivvies and socks, was like hauling oiled frogs from a gooky-bottomed creek. He dragged the oaken tub out onto the porch, tilted and dumped it, and hung the khaki pelts over the tailing. He went back into the house and pushed at the fire again, until his stove gave off a ruddy and hospitable glow—for Maynard had once told him that “a good fire makes a proper housekeeper for when ya goin’ out.” And Maynard ought to know.
Maynard’s House Page 9